Spring Back

Life is tough.  A Zen text (Sengstau) teaches “The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.”  It takes a long time to get to that place, if ever.  Meanwhile, we need all the help we can get.  Whatever gets you through (with a few exceptions, of course).

I believe that poetry can help.  It can distract, entertain, give us solace, make us feel less alone, clarify, and yes, even make us laugh. In College, my friends and I thought up the idea of opening a bar with two entrances.  If you were feeling down, you could go in the entrance marked “Il Penseroso” and weep into your beer.  If feeling cheerful, you could choose the entrance marked “L’Allegro” and be rowdy and boisterous. (Thank you John Milton).  The opposite action was also an option.

For a good cry, read John Milton or Ruth Stone.  To connect with nature, search for a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem or one by Mary Oliver.  Laugh with Edward Lear or Phyllis McGinley. When feeling down and a bit flattened out by the “slings and arrows”,

search out a poem by Jane Hirshfield or David Whyte for a spiritual uplift.  Life is tough.  But you can spring back. Try reading a poem.

LEAPING INTO FEBRUARY

February is not a popular month in many places, bringing miserable weather with it. I well remember the snowy, cold days of February, growing up in Buffalo, New York.


I also remember loving February because it brought two holidays from school (Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays were celebrated separately in those long ago times) and one other very special day---my birthday.

Smack in the middle of the month was a day that brought poetry front and center---Valentine’s Day. The cards cost pennies and the poetry was trite, but it was a thrill being told you were as sweet as sugar in rhyme. Poetry can be a vehicle for expressing our deepest emotions and love longs to be expressed in a poetic form. The great poets have done it well. Take some time this month to read their love poems---you know who they are.

Or try writing a love poem to a dear one (forget Hallmark)---it’s not too late. We have one extra day this February. Take the leap!

Late Blooming

The January ice and cold has finally arrived and I am already imagining early spring buds pushing their way up through the hardened mud. These would be called early bloomers…which then led to my thinking about the opposite. Isn’t the mind a wonderful thing?

While visiting family, I noticed an obituary for Ruth Stone in the “Orange County Register”, November 25, 2011. The well awarded but not so well known poet had died at the age of ninety-six. Then, an article about her, written by Philip Levine, the current poet laureate, appeared in the “New York Times” magazine on Christmas Day.

Ruth was nurtured in poetry as a child by her mother and her aunt, but she didn’t publish her first book until 1959 at age 44 and her second in 1971 at age 56. Her difficult personal life had prevented her from publishing, but not from writing. She published her third book in 1986.

No stranger to turbulence and grief, her poems address the dark themes of betrayal, rage, suicide (her second husband, the poet Walter Stone), loneliness and despair. Just the themes we want to wrestle with in January. But her poems are “loaded with pugnacity, sass and humor.” Take that!

Her life stabilized in the nineties when she became an English Professor at SUNY Binghamton. She continued to publish and began to receive numerous awards in the literary world. A career that essentially began in mid-life blossomed and thrived late in life. Most of her published work came out after she turned 70. She wrote about aging and death ---confronting, lamenting and kidding them.

Philip Levine considers her “one of the truly significant poets of my era.” A late bloomer to be celebrated. I’ll drink to that.

The Longest Night

Yesterday the axial tilt of the earth’s polar hemisphere was farthest away from the sun at

12:30 am. EST or in other more poetic words, last night was the longest night of the year.

Darkness arrives early in the daytime and stays late into the morning hours during this time of year.

Being clever beings, we compensate by lighting up---filling our houses and yards with the glow of Hanukkah and Christmas candles and lights.

But perhaps the plentitude of darkness can soften the glare of our busy lives and invite us to take some quiet time to reflect. Time to sit with our thoughts and become enlightened in a different way.

We take the risk that the ghosts of past regrets and the rattling chains of sadness will arise Scrooge-like into our consciousness. But it may be a time to welcome and sit with these dark moments. It may be a time to greet this dark energy and embrace it as part of our very human selves…and to let it deepen our compassion.

Tomorrow the earth will have tilted a little more toward the Sun and we can celebrate the new day…the longest night will have once again passed.

To all a Good Day!

The Mixed Bag Of November

Autumn at Great Falls, Maryland

One day, I walk the neighborhood, looking up at the beautifully rich palette of the leaves of fall. The next, I am looking down at a soggy mess or a row of ugly, black plastic bags. This has been the theme of my November---a mixed bag of sadness and joy.  It was painted initially in somber colors by the death of a dear friend. I was stopped by a loss that seemed impossible to put into words. Grief is so difficult to express verbally in our culture. Oh, to be in Ireland now that gloom is here.


The somber hues continued when the tree that creates a pink haze outside my window every spring was cut down, rotten to it its core. The days darkened early and cold days chilled.

But then there would appear an astoundingly beautiful autumn day---warm and colorful.  And soon we are about to gather and give thanks for the harvest of the good times, the abundance of our lives, the lasting ties of family and friends. We will laugh and cry, pet our animals, breathe in the fresh air and imagine a better world. It seems to me that joy is often undercoated with a darker color…but “the world goes on and the geese head home.”


Here is the poem by Mary Oliver called “Wild Geese”
 

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Poetry On A String

Poetry On A String

I mentioned in last months blog, an exhibit at the Library of Congress which

featured one form of the literature of Brazil called “cordel”.

I was lucky enough to be able to see the wonderful woodblock illustrations that accompanied some of the poems and stories from the northeastern part of Brazil.

Cordel is a Portuguese word meaning string and is given to these traditional folk art pamphlets, because they were hung on strings to be sold in the local marketplaces.

The poems and stories were relevant and vital, reflecting the everyday events in the lives of the Brazilian people. Topics included birth, death, love, conflict, marital strife, Religion, and politics. The folk hero, Lampiao, a kind of Brazilian Robinhood was a popular subject. They were often done with humor and usually accompanied by a simple woodcut, which pertained to the subject matter. They are still being done today in all parts of Brazil, but more often as an information conduit, focusing on teachings for children, public health issues and politics. Sometimes they are done as an honorary tribute and are biographies of famous Brazilians. It is an art form that is still evolving and in 2011 a special edition cordel was given to President Obama in honor of his visit to Rio de Janeiro

Seeing the exhibit gave rise to many thoughts of my time spent in Brazil and I was thrilled to hear the beautiful Portuguese language spoken by some of the commentators.

It must have put me in a poetic mood, for a few days later I wrote this poem.



Poetry On A String



Write your thoughts

Hang them on a string

in the market place

so people have to

pay

more than a penny

to read them.



Later

be happy when the

wind whirls them away

leaving you

in peace.



 

The Sounds of Simon

Paul Simon sings for the 9/11 10-year memorial

I thought one of the most touching moments during the recent 9/11 anniversary memorial was Paul
Simon’s playing and singing of “The Sound of Silence”.

His simple and direct rendition brought tears to my eyes. The song somehow seemed to evoke a sense of sadness with its first words—“hello darkness my old friend”. These and the words that follow awakened memories of our shared national tragedies when we did come together and speak words of comfort and compassion.

But as the song continues, the silence begins to take over and grow “like a cancer”.

This lack of connection---the inability to embrace each other with words or even to understand each other has taken over center stage in many of our encounters.

I think the poet of song, Paul Simon captured these dark moments. Hopefully, we can find the courage to cross the abyss and dare to “stir the sound of silence.”


“Fool said I, you do not know, silence like a cancer grows

Hear my words and I might teach you, take my arms that I might reach you

But my words, like silent raindrops fell, and echoed in the wells of silence.”


Some links of interest for the fall.

www.folger.edu/poetry

Library of Congress is featuring a September Symposium on Brazilian literature

which is featuring folk poetry called cordel----booklets of poetry illustrated with woodblock images.